


Different

by PokeeArt



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers Endgame, Brief mention of Pepper Potts - Freeform, Gamora (mentioned) - Freeform, Guardians of the Galaxy (mentioned) - Freeform, Outer Space, Peter Parker (mentioned) - Freeform, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Reminiscing, Self-Discovery, Self-Reflection, Thanos (mentioned) - Freeform, This is sad and im sorry, avengers endgame trailer, avengers endgame trailer did this, based off of avengers endgame trailer, dark themes, space travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-07
Updated: 2018-12-07
Packaged: 2019-09-13 18:23:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16897662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PokeeArt/pseuds/PokeeArt
Summary: So Nebula does what her sister can’t.She mourns but it’s a soft, quiet ordeal. She doesn’t think much further because she knows it will only end in darkness. She mourns for people she never got to know, places and memories she never got to share. It hurts.





	Different

**Author's Note:**

> Brief trigger warning just in case; implied thoughts of dying / wanting to die, and self worth issues carry on throughout the work. 
> 
> But I mean it's Tony Stark and Nebula so like this is normal (sadly). Please read accordingly

She knew it was a hopeless and useless mission the second the man asked her if she wanted to come.

The man had spent a few hours gathering and sorting through Star Lord's ship. He must know there’s no way he’ll get back to Earth alive. It doesn’t seem to matter to him. His eyes look like dust and desperation. 

Nebula’s seen the same look in herself and her sister when they were younger. It’s the face people make when Thanos strips them of their entire life. Decimates their planets and loved ones. The man is mourning and falling, she can see it as he shakes near the last place the spider child had laid.

The man seems to be mourning all of them and that’s something she can’t understand. From her knowledge he’d never met the Guardians before yet the sorrow he carried was heavier than just one lost child. 

Nebula herself was in all honesty mourning too. Morning her sister. The sister that never cared until she did. The sister that played whatever way it took to survive their father and then led at the first chance of freedom. Nebula wished she’d gone with Gamora then, the two of them against the world, against their father. 

It was her fault that Gamora was dead now. If she hadn’t been captured by their father Gamora would have never told him where the stone was. She wouldn’t have had to trade the stone, and ultimately her life, to save the heap of scrapes that was her sister. The sister that eventually escaped anyway. The sister that couldn’t even exact revenge on Thanos for ruining not only her entire life but Gamora’s. 

She wonders how her sister would feel now, knowing all her friends died trying to do what Nebula could not. She would mourn, she would grieve. They were her friends, her family, and heaven knows they felt Gamora’s lost like a knife wound deep inside. She wonders if she should mourn the Guardians for Gamora, knows that her sister wouldn’t want them to feel lost and worthless even in death, wouldn’t let their deaths be in vain.

So Nebula does what her sister can’t. 

She mourns but it’s a soft, quiet ordeal. She doesn’t think much further because she knows it will only end in darkness. She mourns for people she never got to know, places and memories she never got to share. It hurts.

She sees the hurt reflected back at her from the only other living thing on this planet. It’s twisted and dangerous and different from her own but it’s still recognizable. It reminds her of herself and she wants to take that twisted and dangerous thing and use it to fight back, hurt the person that hurt them, but something else that confuses her about the man is that the grief and sorrow and anger aren’t directed outward, at least not all of it, it’s curved around the shape of the man. 

Like armor.

That’s one of the reasons she knows he’s not going to make it home. He doesn’t want to. Not completely. He doesn’t want to know what’s waiting for him when he gets there. Or more likely who. Who’s gone and who’s there. What’s left of his life that didn’t seem to be here and already gone. The man has to go, can’t give up because of this setback, won’t and appears to not want to stop chasing the now ghost her father left behind. He doesn’t want to know but he can’t not know. 

She hates her father just a little more. She hates herself a little more too, when she nods her silent agreement that she’ll go with him. That she’ll get on Star Lord’s - Gamora’s love, her light and beam that brought happiness- ship and practically watch the man drift into the space to die.

Because that’s the only place this can lead. The man is just that, a man. Flesh and blood and hunger and hurt. He won’t last even halfway to Earth and refuses to stop anywhere else. His mad, desperate and useless last attempt to offer himself comfort. A place he can finally rest. Home.

Nebula keeps quiet and lets this dying man have his last hope. It’s not going to change anything. She’d never be able to convince him to do something else. She really doesn’t want to.

She wishes she could just give up like the man. She wishes she knew how to make it look like that wasn’t what she was doing at all, like the man. She wishes she had turned to dust too, just to have the opportunity to see her sister one last time. 

Nebula tries to stop wishing about things after that. She hadn’t meant to cry, didn’t know she still could under her own influence, hadn’t meant to draw the man’s attention to herself. He didn’t say a word and stopped looking at her once he figured out what was happening. She’s grateful he understands and doesn’t offer her comfort or a listening ear. He leaves her and her bleeding wound alone just like she’s left his gaping hole and shredded heart alone.

They don’t talk much. She still doesn’t even know what he calls himself. She knows he’s suppose to be some kind of Iron Man but he’s not. He’s flesh and bone and dark sad eyes. The armor he’d worn in battle, the armor that had made her father bleed, won’t work right now. She doesn’t know if it because of the damage it sustained or the man’s inability to fix it with stuff from the ship or the fact that the man wants to die out here.

They’ll both die out here.

Nebula has accepted that, knows she’ll end up watching the man die and fade away before she even gets close, but she’s ready when it happens. Where else does she have to go? What else can she do? Thanos is long gone and got what he wanted. 

There’s nothing to change that and trying stupidly desperate things to fix what’s left isn’t her style. She catches the man doing stupid desperate things off and on, when he knows he’s close he sends out a distress call, three actually, at different times with different messages. He talks to the face of Iron Man but speaks to what she thinks is a woman far away from here. Home is her guess. 

He never once weeps. At least not for himself. He touches the Iron Man face before tucking it away and laying down to die. They don’t have any food left or water and she knows the air is getting too thin for someone of flesh and bone and pain to breathe for much longer. She knows he’s dying, crumbling to dust in front of her like everyone else has, and she doesn’t know what to do.

Nebula doesn’t want him to die. She’s gotten attached to this weird creature of a man, who tries to smile and chat with her when he sees her but is cracking into a million pieces himself. She’s gotten used to his dumb flat jokes and nonsense babble when he thought no one was listening. She’d grow used to his matted hair and dark sad eyes and the unsubtle attempts to make sure she was alright, at least physically, he knew better than to stomp on her emotional issues. 

She didn’t want anyone else to die because of her or her father. Too many people had suffered. 

This man, who offered her a purpose, while it was a short and meaningless one it gave her time to figure herself out, and stayed by her side for months without once trying to hurt her or over step his boundaries, was dying. This man that she’d selfishly grown to care and think about was doing to disappear. Just like Gamora. 

Nebula decided that she wasn’t going to let that happen. Maybe the man would hate her later when he wasn’t dead and headed home to what was left of his family but she wasn’t going to let him die yet. 

The messages he’d left on the distress signal hurt her already sore heart. He spoke of his perceived mistakes on Titan and apologized for failing to stop Thanos. Gave a weak warning of the tragedy of what already happened in a way to offer closure and an explanation to anyone who hadn’t figured it out yet. He spoke about the child, Peter she learned, and how he was never supposed to even be there and how it shouldn’t have been him who faded to nothing. 

That made her pause and wonder how people were chosen to be turned to dust and death. Was it random? Was it preplanned? Was it fate and destiny and all the other horrible rubush she tried not to believe in?

Why wasn’t the man dust and ash? The entire group of the Guardians on Titan disappeared. The child and sorcerer too. Why was it just them left? They had they not been chosen? Were they unworthy of dying and finally letting others hand situations afterward? Were they unworthy of finally getting a break from everything? Were they unworthy and unallowed to find peace in something and finally relax and accept themselves? 

Nebula had never really thought about it but she wondered if she even counted as a living being. Sure she breathed and ate and had thoughts like other living creatures but she was more machine that living tissue at this point. Did she even count as a living thing? Was she even included in the Snap’s possibility? Was it ever an option to die? 

The several minutes it took to pull herself out of those thoughts were hard. But those thoughts made her mad, determined. The man’s soft voice played over on a loop as she focused back at the distress signals he’d left.

No one had heard them. No one was coming to save them. They were going to die here. Miles and light years away from Earth. From Home. 

Nebula screamed and slammed her fist down on the console. Shouted her own desperate message along with the man’s even acceptance of death. She shouted and yelled from someone to care, for someone to want to help and heal and give a fuck about them. She cried about how fate screwed them and left them to suffer and die alone, so far away from any family either of them had. She whispered the names of those she knew were gone and apologized to those she didn’t know.

After she sat below the console and stared at the stars slowly moving pass the ship as they drifted. She was tired and hurt and so so angry. She wasn’t ready to die anymore. She didn’t really want to die anymore. She wanted to hurt and scream and fight. She wanted to get revenge and live feeling accomplished for once in her life. 

She wanted to live.

She didn’t want anyone else to die. She could see just the barest amount of the man’s hunched shoulders from where he was laying and waiting to die. She didn’t want him to die. She didn’t want him to want to die. She didn’t want fate to rip someone else from her cold hands. She didn’t want to lose the odd understanding they had of each other, their quiet nonverbal communications and emotional wavelength. She’d never find someone who understands without words how she felt like the man. She didn’t want to lose him. 

Nebula closed her eyes and wished one last time.

She wished this time to be different. She wanted to make it different.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in like three hours after watching the avengers endgame trailer and wow i made myself sad with this


End file.
